• Complain

Daniel Gumbiner - The Boatbuilder

Here you can read online Daniel Gumbiner - The Boatbuilder full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. City: San Francisco, year: 2018, publisher: McSweeney's, genre: Prose. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:

Romance novel Science fiction Adventure Detective Science History Home and family Prose Art Politics Computer Non-fiction Religion Business Children Humor

Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.

Daniel Gumbiner The Boatbuilder
  • Book:
    The Boatbuilder
  • Author:
  • Publisher:
    McSweeney's
  • Genre:
  • Year:
    2018
  • City:
    San Francisco
  • ISBN:
    978-1944211-54-7
  • Rating:
    5 / 5
  • Favourites:
    Add to favourites
  • Your mark:
    • 100
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

The Boatbuilder: summary, description and annotation

We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "The Boatbuilder" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.

At 28 years old, Eli Berg Koenigsberg has never encountered a challenge he couldnt push through, until a head injury leaves him with lingering headaches and a weakness for opiates. Berg moves to a remote Northern California town, seeking space and time to recover, but soon finds himself breaking into homes in search of pills. Addled by addiction and chronic pain, Berg meets Alejandro, a reclusive, master boatbuilder, and begins to see a path forward. Alejandro offers Berg honest labor, but more than this, he offers him a new approach to his suffering, a template for survival amid intense pain. Nurtured by his friendship with Alejandro and aided, too, by the comradeship of many in Talinas, Berg begins to return to himself. Written in gleaming prose, this is a story about resilience, community, and what it takes to win back your soul. Nominated for the National Book Award 2018 Longlisted for the NBA Fiction award

Daniel Gumbiner: author's other books


Who wrote The Boatbuilder? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.

The Boatbuilder — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "The Boatbuilder" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Daniel Gumbiner

THE BOATBUILDER

For my parents, Richard and Ellen Gumbiner

I have had an entirely new feeling about life ever since making an ax handle

E.B. White, in a letter to his wife
CHAPTER 1 BERG CRACKED THE WINDOW and squeezed his way into the farmhouse He - photo 1

CHAPTER 1

BERG CRACKED THE WINDOW and squeezed his way into the farmhouse. He had first seen this farmhouse while walking the dog on the hiking trail that circumnavigated the bay. In the morning the house seemed to be occupied, but during the day it was empty and often some of the windows were left open. People in Talinas always left their windows open. They were not used to thieves breaking and entering. Berg was not used to breaking and entering.

He went to the medicine cabinet first because that was the most likely place to find what he was looking for, but there was nothing of interest. Heart pills, vitamin supplements, deodorant, foot creams, and, strangely, Scotch tape. He moved back to the main room and began rifling through the drawers of a dresser. A seed catalogue, lots of photos of boats, two pairs of scissors, a dead black fly.

The next room appeared to be a study. There was an oilskin map and a large bookshelf and an old iMac, its case bright blue like some kind of tropical drink. Are you kidding me? he thought. The last time he had seen one of these computers was in elementary school, in the computer lab, and he had used it to play Oregon Trail. He had never been very good at Oregon Trail, too reckless with his decision-making. His oxen always died fording the river and the members of his party often ended up suffering from some kind of bowel-related disease.

It was a cold day, the day he entered the farmhouse, with a searching wind from the west and a layer of fog, low-slung and thick, covering the bay like marshmallow topping. But inside the house was warm and full of clear light. It smelled like cedar and coffee and salty air. If he hadnt been robbing the house, he would have liked to sit quietly in its living room and pass several hours reading a book. Whoever owned this place had a lot of beautiful furniture, including a dining table built from barn siding and a desk that seemed to have been carved out of the base of an oak tree.

Finding nothing useful in the living room, Berg made his way to the bedroom. A king-size bed and a window looking out on a grove of laurels and cedars. He thought he should be looking at the bay through this window but he couldnt see it. He felt a bit turned around. He was sweating now, a cold sweat that he felt primarily in his hands and feet. In the upper drawer of the bedroom closet he found what he was looking for: a bottle of Lortab 7.5s. There was also a set of keys and a book of poems and some sort of amulet with an inscription in a foreign language. It seemed like the type of thing that would give him +2 dexterity.

Berg had spent the vast majority of seventh and eighth grade playing an online role-playing game called Quest. Every day, from the carpeted basement of his parents suburban home, he battled orcs and traveled to foreign lands. His mother had to wrench him away from the computer to go to soccer practice or Hebrew school and, over time, she grew tired of this, and banned the game. She insisted that he read instead. Her father, Rabbi Joel Rothman, had been a genius Talmudic scholar and she often expressed, in overt and covert fashion, the hope that Berg would follow in his learned path.

Such a sweet, wise man, she would say. And then always: May he rest in peace.

Berg grabbed the Lortabs and went back to the main room, where he continued to open and close drawers. Suddenly, in the middle of his sifting, he felt compelled to go to the bathroom. Percocet made him constipated so these days he was often constipated. The constipation moved in bizarre cycles, an astrology he couldnt decipher. He would go days without being able to shit and then, all of a sudden, hed have to shit very badly, which was what was happening to him right now, as he opened and closed drawers, looking for prescription medicine inside the farmhouse of a person he did not know.

He went to the bathroom because there was no other choice really. Well, there were other choices but they eluded him at the moment. It was a high-speed moment.

Things progressed well on the toilet but not as quickly as hed hoped. In the middle of the process he heard a shuffle outside the door. He held still, which was not easy in that instant, and he listened closely. It was just house noises, he assured himself. When he was finished on the toilet he thought, for a second, about whether or not he should flush. If he flushed someone might hear him, but if he didnt there would be clear evidence of a break-in. He knew this was a thing that robbers did, break in and shit in the toilet and leave the shit there. Some kind of malevolent, scent-marking ritual.

He poured a glass of water and took four Lortabs. Then he flushed and left the house. Once outside, he found the trail on the ridge, and began walking home. The sun was setting now and the bay spread out before him, brown and ebbing, the color of pinto beans. Cows stood sedately in the fields and, every once in a while, a flock of cowbirds burst from the wet earth like black confetti. He could feel the Lortabs brimming inside him, warmth flooding his whole body, and soon, he knew, he would be in love with everything.

CHAPTER 2

BERG HAD MOVED TO Talinas a few weeks earlier to house-sit for Nells friends mom, who was traveling to Bali. Her name was Mimi. She was sixty-five and it was the first time shed been out of the country. Mimi was retired and, in her retirement, she had devoted herself to pottery. She had many earth-toned coffee mugs and her yard was filled with ceramic bunnies, all of them standing stony watch like scouts in a frontier army. Mimi had left him a six-pack in the fridge and some eggs and several blocks of cheese. She also left him a long list of things to do, including watering the plants, caring for the chickens, and feeding and walking the dog, Fish. He was a leggy black dog who didnt like making eye contact. He was very smart but very anxious and whenever Berg reached out to pet him he would draw back and give him a skeptical, sideways glance. The chickens so far had proven easier to deal with. There were four of them and they were all named after state capitals: Sacramento, Atlanta, Baton Rouge, and Lansing.

Berg spent most nights at the Tavern. He would sit at the bar, stoned on Perc 30s, drinking beer and watching baseball games he didnt care about. He often ended up in conversations with the owner of the bar, a man named Ed Conotic, whose family also owned the other bar in town, the Western, which was located on the bay, next door to Vlasics Boat Works. Ed Conotic hated Nick Vlasic and often told long, convoluted stories which concluded with Ed or one of Eds family members suffering some grave miscarriage of justice at the hands of Nick Vlasic or one of Nick Vlasics family members. Ed also liked to tell stories about his stepbrother, Gary Conotic, who, were it not for a freak staph infection caused by a dirty knee brace, might have made it in the NBA.

He could shoot the lights out, Ed said. Played on that team with Walt Weir that went to the state semifinals. Could shoot the lights out.

Ed was not really interested in listening to what Berg had to say, or what anyone had to say for that matter. He was one of these old men who seemed to have chosen his profession so that he would have a convenient and unassailable soap box from which he could express his opinions. This suited Berg fine: he was not very interested in discussing his life.

Next page
Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «The Boatbuilder»

Look at similar books to The Boatbuilder. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.


Reviews about «The Boatbuilder»

Discussion, reviews of the book The Boatbuilder and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.